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Most family law cases involve at least one financial issue that needs to be resolved. This requires that both parties prepare a Financial Statement and produce financial disclosure. Often, this is the first time that a client will take a hard look at his or her finances and gather all of the relevant information about their financial situation in one place. For many, this is an overwhelming endeavor. In an effort to simplify the process, clients will try to cut corners wherever possible, and inadvertently leave out important information.

A client’s financial behaviours, experiences, and preconceived beliefs about money can have a large impact on the service that you provide. It is important to not only understand the behaviours of divorcing clients but to also manage these behaviours to help them arrive at an equitable settlement.

Couples seeking divorce today have lost confidence in the customary system of divorce resolution, which involves litigation. People feel litigation is expensive, adversarial, and unable to cope with conflict. People cannot justify the legal costs, which impair their future wealth. People simply do not trust that the legal separation will be fair. While no one wants to have to think about separation and divorce, it is encouraging to know that there is an alternative to the pitfalls of litigation: mediation.

Every professional working with divorcing clients should be mindful of the importance of insurance, particularly for the spouse receiving spousal and/or child support. Insurance is crucial for the long-term viability of the support agreement. Without adequate insurance on the payor spouse, the recipient spouse is at risk of losing his or her support income. This could occur for a variety of reasons: the spouse with the ongoing child or spousal support obligation could die or become incapacitated, for example, or could lose his or her employment or could alter the designated beneficiary in the group plan.​

As divorce professionals, you have the power to deeply impact and influence the lives of your clients. Often, you get so busy running your practice that you forget about how you just changed the course of a client’s life. Every heart-wrenching decision and every strategic move that you help your client make will change their life forever. How rewarding would it be to serve more people going through this life-altering experience who are willing and ready to engage in your services so that they can have peace of mind about life after divorce?

Child support is an attempt by the court to ensure that the children’s basic needs are met, and that as they go from one household to the other they have a relatively comparable standard of living. In most states, there is a formula or calculator to help determine how much child support should be paid from one parent’s household to the other household. Generally, child support is meant to cover the basics—food, clothing and shelter. There are far more costs above and beyond what child support would ever cover. And it is these costs that also must be shared by parents.

With so much emphasis on the financial aspects of divorce, it is easy to lose sight of how valuable and varied our expertise is, and how well it translates into many other areas of the divorce process. If you are currently providing financial strategies in the CDFA® professional capacity and want to expand your menu of services, consider working with attorneys, mediators and other divorce allies as an expert witness.

A business, whether owned wholly or in part, may represent a significant portion of the marital estate in divorce settings. In these situations, the parties will frequently disagree on the value of the business. To understand the value of a business and the disagreement of the parties, two very important concepts need to be discussed: Standard of Value and Approaches to Value.

In the 1970s, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the concept of cognitive bias to help explain why their studies showed people diverging from rational choice making. Since then, a number of these biases have been identified, and social scientists study how they affect decision-making in a variety of areas (finance being one of them).

Report writing is an essential part of our profession. Whether it’s a cover letter or a comprehensive report for trial, understanding the basics of good report writing is a must have skill. In this webinar we will be discussing the structure, format and content of a trial appropriate report. We will also be discussing designing your Curriculum Vitae to be bulletproof upon cross-examination. Courts often require that your information be shared with the opposing counsel as well as entered into evidence. It is crucial that your written report stand as a model of clarity.​